Your Brother's Keeper
by RandomDarkness
Summary: "you're not a cruel man... you just forgot I was there." In Sherlock's experience, jilted ex semi-girlfriends don't randomly take the room downstairs. He's sure she was picked for affect, but does her employer want him broken or mended?
1. Hello Darkness My Old Friend 1

.

.

.

Mrs Hudson set a tray of large sugar cookies and a pitcher of sweetened milk on the table and fussed, cleaning away the remains of whatever the boys had thrown together for dinner.

"Morning Mrs Hudson!" John said cheerfully, "Oh, lovely! Thank you!" He dived happily on a cookie.

"Not me love, I'm not your house keeper."

"Oh, Talis from downstairs? These are brilliant, I'll have to stop by on my way out and thank her." John poured himself a glass of the sweet milk and sat down at the table, pulling the newspaper open and skimming over it.

"See that you do, God knows _he_ wont." She nodded towards Sherlock's room and John could only snort in agreement. "I did tell 'im last week that there was a young lady moving in... I don't even think he heard me."

"It was a busy week." John snagged another cookie under Mrs Hudson's mildly reproving gaze.

"That isn't really a breakfast, now is it Doctor?" She said, gently but pointedly pulling the tray of cookies to the other side of the table.

"Quite right, quite right. I'll drop my compliments in to Talis on the way out. I imagine Sherlock will be up soon."

"Ha. You say that as though he's in any way predictable." Mrs Hudson scoffed.

It was hours later that Sherlock emerged, though he looked for all the world as though he hadn't slept at all. He flounced around the apartment for a while, absently eating cookies he'd found on the table and glaring balefully at the various items in the room which refused to jump up of their own accord and offer him some kind of diversion. John would be gone too work, no salvation from his mind numbing boredom there, and Mrs Hudson had long since made it her habit to be gone most of the day whether she needed too or not. It was that or find herself caught up in his manic search for entertainment.

Floating up through the floor of the kitchen he heard the grating, nerve jarring sound of bubble-gum pop. Some vapid, helpless, brainless, cretin with no more spontaneity or talent than a Goose honking in the fog. Humphing in irritation and not pausing to consider the implications of someone enamored of bubble-gum pop being in a usually deserted room, he hurried down, still in his pajama's and robe, to burst through the door of the previously empty room.

Inside, the place was transformed. Oh the paint was still peeling off the walls, but it was largely hidden by great lengths of fabric in shades of purple and blue which were tacked to the ceiling beginning around the light fitting and then again in the corners to drape down the drab walls like the inside of an Arabian tent. Beside the fireplace, which had been turned into a little shrine with candles and a few photographs, stood a darkly stained wooden desk covered in books on literary analysis and Shakespeare. Across the room, beside the door where Sherlock stood, blinking stupidly, was a double bed, unmade with a young woman sitting cross-legged in the middle surrounded by books.

"Four days and..." she glanced at a little black clock on her bedside table, "eight hours. I was going to give it another few days before I turned the music up again." Talis' eyes rose from the copy of 'Beginning Shakespeare' she was reading to regard him coolly over the rims of her glasses.

"... What are you doing in my house?"

"I live here."

"What? Since when?"

"Well... as I said, four days and eight hours ago. Or at least that's when three other students helped me to move it. We were quite loud, and not at all secretive." She set her book aside and looked at him seriously. "I knew it was you... when Mrs Hudson told me why the room was so cheap... I just knew it was you."

"Then why did you take the room?"

"Because it's cheap, it's central, and let's face it, you've already proven you can go weeks without noticing me at all. Stay upstairs and we'll be fine." She reached for the book again but Sherlock lurched forward and snatched it, glaring down at the offending object as though it were a rude little puzzle. "Hey!"

"Why are you reading this? 'Beginning Shakespeare', you began Shakespeare when you were eight, this can't possibly be relevant to you." He seemed pleased, even triumphant at his declaration, as though he'd somehow caught her out in a lie.

"It's a safety blanket Sherly. I like reading it, no one expects you to understand the concept,"

"There's no need to get personal."

"No, never any need for that at all." She crawled to the edge of the bed and snatched the book back, glaring at him darkly. "Get out of my room and go away. I've got work to do."

"Not another thesis on this woolly headed nonsense?" he tried to hold onto the book but she was too quick for him. "Haven't you already published enough of this rubbish?"

"This rubbish is research into the most productive creative minds in literary history, go back to your microscope you emotional retard and leave me alone!" She picked up a candle from her bedside table and threw it at him, humphing angrily when he caught it.

"I don't see why you're so angry with me. You're the one who moved out."

"How long did it take you to notice I was gone, Sherlock? Was it two weeks later when the rent came due, or did you polish of everything in the kitchen before then and wonder why no one had restocked it for you?" Her voice rose in pitch and volume until, by the end, she almost screeched at him.

"That's a really annoying habit you still haven't grown out of..." he pointed out blandly.

"get out of my room, Sherly..." She growled dangerously. "Oh, and remind John that we're having dinner at seven down here."

"What? You're cooking for John now?"

She'd pulled herself back together and looked at him coolly again, opening her book without looking to a dogeared page. "We've had dinner the last two nights... Where did you think the left-overs in your fridge came from?"

"You know he has a girlfriend," Sherlock said, completely ignoring his own bitchiness in saying so.

"Sarah. Lovely girl. She joined us for dinner last night... John said something about you playing with eye-balls."

"It was an experiment!"

"Just don't put the jelly in the ice cube tray again. Anderson never got over it, you know?" She went back to her book, proud and pleased that she'd at least managed to get the last word in as Sherlock fumed and grumbled in the doorway before shutting the door none to gently and storming up the stairs. "Dick head." She grumbled to herself.

.

By the time John got home that afternoon, Sherlock had worked himself into a bit of a state. One by one he'd eaten his way through the plater of sugar cookies, effectively shunting his system into hyperactivity. "She's staking me. It's Mycroft! She's working for him! She must be..." he was babbling when John walked in.

"Who is?"

"Talis!"

"Oh, you've met her then. I though maybe you two were avoiding each other or something." John pouted a little that the tray was empty, and poured himself a glass of water instead. It wasn't too long until dinner anyway.

"Avoiding? How could I avoid her, no it's perfect you see? You see?"

"Umm... no. Not really. You two do know each other then?"

"What? Yes of course. He couldn't send someone I didn't know, if he did I'd know it was him!" Sherlock spun and looked at him wildly for a moment. "She drugged the cookies! She's diabolical!"

"Sherlock! She hasn't drugged anything, I had at least five of them this morning before I left. I thought they were quite good actually."

"Well maybe it only affects higher brain functions. Ah!" Sherlock yelled as John threw a tea towel at him. "Right, right, sorry."

"They're just full of sugar, your blood pressure is probably up for the first time in days, that's all. If you ate better this wouldn't happen."

"Yeees well, you might have told me you two have been supping together. What could you possibly have to talk about, anyway?" he asked.

"She's a lovely woman, Sherlock, and for the record she's very interesting. Did you know she's a doctor of history and literature? She's working on a dissertation on Yeats." John told him.

"Yes, yes, yes, the same old 'soft' business she's been wallowing in for over a decade! Avoiding any real discoveries in favor of writing about dead poets."

"You do know her then!"

"We used to live together." Sherlock said absently, pacing back and forth.

"I beg your pardon! Like... like a girlfriend?"

"No! Yes. Maybe,"

"Well, at least you've covered all the possibilities there..."

"We went to university at the same time, I had an apartment and she had a high tolerance for... me. She stayed for almost a year."

"Well... what happened?" John leaned forward, fascinated by the possibility that Sherlock might actually have felt something real for someone as a younger man.

"She moved out."

"Yes, I got that. Why?"

Sherlock turned and looked down at him blankly. "No idea. I was concentrating on other things at the time."

"Ah, that'll be it then." John stood and headed towards the bathroom.

"What? Where are you going?"

"Women don't like being ignored for 'other things' generally, and I'm going to clean up for dinner." He loosened his tie as he spoke.

"Clean up? It's not a date, John, you're eating Welsh home cooking with a flatmate."

"I am showing a lovely young woman who took the time and effort to cook for me that I appreciate it by not showing up looking like I've just run a marathon. You don't have to be dating a woman in order to be polite to her." He turned on his heel and went into the bathroom leaving Sherlock to fume irritably behind him.

Come seven o'clock, John trotted down the stairs in a clean pressed white shirt and smart black pants to be greeted warmly at the bottom of the stairs by a smiling Talis in a light cotton dress which started white around the hem and smoothly changed to a dark purple at the bodice. "You look... irritated." He faltered in his compliment as her expression of welcome melted into annoyance. John looked over his shoulder to find Sherlock in his usual suit jacket and pants standing behind him at the top of the stairs.

"Evening." He said smoothly.

"What do you want Sherly?" Talis said through tight lips.

"Sherly?" John half laughed half coughed.

"I'm sorry, I thought you said dinner was at seven."

"... Sherlock, you weren't actually invited," John started uncomfortably.

"He knows." Talis said shortly, offering John her hand and pulling him down off the stairs. "There's no point, he likes it when you make a fuss. Come on," she deliberately turned her back and led John into the small kitchen and dining room she shared with Mrs Hudson. About the table there were four place settings and Sherlock looked at them, his brow furrowed in slight irritation, as Talis gestured for them both to sit.

"You knew he was coming then?" John asked, his eyebrow raised partly in amusement, partly in curiosity.

"He liked to think he's inscrutable, but he follows rules of behavior just like everyone else, it's just that his rule book is written in 'butt-head'." She smiled sweetly when John pulled out her chair for her but waved him off. "Sit, please, you too Mrs Hudson. I've got everything." She bustled happily about, humming to herself as she put a number of steaming pots and platters on the table containing various meats, vegetables and a very decadent looking pie for desert. Sherlock sniffed it all and an irritable frown formed on his face.

"You've put mint in everything!"

"Sherlock!" Mrs Hudson admonished but Sherlock ignored her.

"You know I don't like it."

Talis looked at him steadily for a long time, refusing to be deterred by the manic look in his eye until finally a smile spread across her face. "Technically, you weren't invited, and John likes mint just fine."

"How could you possibly know that?"

John opened his mouth but Talis waved him off. "I asked, Sherly. It's what normal people do." She dished servings out to everyone and then, turning with a flourish from the oven, she placed a dish before Sherlock which had been prepared before the mint was added.

"And you always said I was a show off." Sherlock muttered, placing the napkin delicately in his lap.

"Actually I always said you were a troubled genius." She sat at her place between John and Mrs Hudson, looking across the table at Sherlock. "Of course that was before I knew you."

"Come on now, children." Mrs Hudson fussed with her napkin, trying to cool the tension at the table. "Talis has put on a lovely spread, the least you could do Sherlock would be to bite your tongue. You're not the easiest person to get along with dear, even for those of us who adore you."

"You adore everyone, Mrs Hudson."

"Yes dear... but it takes effort some days."

"Talis, you were telling me yesterday about your work on Yeats," John said spontaneously, trying to direct the conversation to a less controversial topic, little realizing his mistake.

"Good God, Yeats? Really? It'll be O'Casey and Joyce next!" Sherlock snorted.

"Actually it's O'Casey and Joyce at the same time." She leaned forward and met his eyes, "Synge too." She said and chuckled softly when he shuddered.

"Insufferable prats, all of them. Massively heightened senses of their own self worth, and an obscene love of phonetic rhyme."

For a moment John thought Talis would argue as she glared across the table, her posture unnaturally stiff, but she didn't. Instead a tiny smile quirked up the corner of her mouth and she started to chuckle softly, her eyes tearing up. Sherlock looked at her coolly for a moment and then he too started to laugh. "You're right of course. The point isn't to justify them, Sherly," when she said it this time it sounded more affectionate, "it's to articulate their uselessness in perfect English for everyone to understand."

"Oh who cares what everyone else thinks. Your beloved academics have been singing Yeats praises since before you were born!"

She sat back, flopping one arm lazily over the back of her chair looking perfectly relaxed for the first time since John had met her. "To prove I'm smarter than they are I suppose. You'll never convince me you don't understand that."

"Of course I do, but it isn't really an achievement to prove you're smarter than monkeys." Sherlock gently patted his lips with his napkin, looking at her intensely. "When will you abandon this fuzzy-headed fluff and succumb to the hard sciences?"

John blinked at the exchange, finding the sudden shift in the dynamic off-putting, bizarre and utterly fascinating. Talis was smiling now, at ease and relaxed, somehow the banter and snark had eased her down.

"When I've learned it all. Can't move on to the next thing until I've finished this one." She told him with a cheeky grin.

"Ha!" Sherlock sat back, his arms flopping down beside him and his face animated and amused in a way john had rarely seen in the past few weeks. "Still stalling for time, avoiding any real work."

"I wouldn't want to muscle in on your one claim to glory, Sherly. God knows you'll never be famous for your interpersonal skills."

"You didn't care about that before..." He said carefully, in a measured tone.

"Everyone cares about that Sherlock... We can fool ourselves otherwise for a while but..." She sighed then and stood. John lurched to his feet as she did in true gentlemanly style and Talis blushed slightly. "It's not that you hurt me, Sherlock, you're not a cruel man... you just forgot I was there, an' in the end that's worse." She tucked her chair in neatly and went to the door. "Enjoy desert, I have an early class in the morning... Goodnight."

John, who was still standing, mumbled a goodnight and then looked down at Sherlock, whose face was even more blank and unreadable that usual. All traces of his apparent mirth from moments ago was gone and he seemed cold and far away. "Sherlock...?"

"Yes?"

"She really was your girlfriend?" John's voice betrayed his surprise.

"It's possible." He looked up at his friend and for the first time John saw genuine confusion on Sherlock's face.

"How can you not know?"

"Does it matter?" Sherlock stood, leaving his chair out and turned to leave.

"I think it matters very much to her," John pointed out steadily.

"Give it time, John, and you'll come to realize that Talis feels intensely about everything she lays eyes on. She's a sentimental creature."

.

.

.

**Note: Oop, longer than I usually write, and look, it's past 1am. Dang it!**


	2. Brain of a junked up humming bird 2

.

.

.

It was another two days before Sherlock ran into Talis again, she was an expert at avoiding him it seemed, though he could tell that through some magic all her own she still managed to spend unsettling amounts of time with both John and Mrs Hudson, both of whom thought she was 'lovely'. Sherlock has sort of dumped the idea that she might be stalking him, though the statistical probability of them finding themselves in the same house again did seem astronomical. She was a hardcore literature nerd with the soul of a hippy librarian, who would she be working for? She'd been in the house less than a week and Sherlock already found she was having 'that' affect on people. John had a copy of the Norton's Shakespeare anthology in the living room and God help him, he'd been reading it! Mrs Hudson had spent an entire evening plying through every Shakespeare movie made in the last ten years! All under Talis' pleased and proud brown eyes.

"You're ruining them." Sherlock groused, dumping 'Classic Irish Short Stories' down on her bedside table and glaring at it.

"Hey! Gentle with the books!" She snatched up the precious volume and put it on a pile on the other side of the bed. "Why do you even care what they read? You _**liked**_ Macbeth if I remember correctly."

"You don't, it was trite, boring and utterly predictable."

"What? You sat through it twice you big fat liar!" She put her book down a little harder than she might have meant to and stood up angrily.

"That soccer person, what was his name? Pierce? He'd just blown you off for the floozy who always wore florescent pink miniskirts. You'd only been in a few weeks... nodding and agreeing seemed like the thing to do when you wouldn't stop crying."

Talis looked mortally offended and Sherlock couldn't help wondering exactly which sentence had been the one to set her off. She pointed out the door, her lips set in a thin angry line, as though pretending to enjoy Shakespeare was an unforgivable crime, even if he had done it to make her stop crying. Perhaps he should have explained that better? He opened his mouth to do so but she shook her head and struck him, hard, with both palms flat against his chest driving him backwards out of the door. He stumbled, coughing and looked at her in amazement.

"When did you take up Wing Chun?" He asked, taking two quick steps back towards the door, which she closed loudly in his face. "Curiouser and curiouser..." he mumbled to himself, smiling slightly at the irony of the fact that he was quoting literature she'd drummed into him during their year living under the same roof.

.

'_was that really necessary_?' Asked the voice on her phone when she picked it up off the bed spread where she'd quickly thrown in when Sherlock burst in.

"He irked me. Go away and let me do what you're paying me for."

'_You're supposed to get close to him..._'

"No one gets close to him, you know that."

'_Should I be concerned about your ability to do your job, Talis_?'

"Sherlock Holmes is very good at seeing what you don't want him too. If I try to hide the fact that he hurt me, he'll see it anyway and wonder _**why**_ I'm hiding it. At that point you might as well have used one of your goons."

'_Can you do this?_'

"If you honestly thought I couldn't, you wouldn't have put me here. Stop testing the water and let me do this my way. You're creepy and you fuck up my chi."

'_For a pretty girl, you've got a nasty mouth on you_.'

"All the best girls have nasty mouths, it's just that none of us would use them on you."

There was a dry but genuinely amused chuckle on the other end of the line before it went to dial tone. Talis tossed the phone onto her bedside table and flopped down onto her back. He really was an insufferable ass. Maybe all men were? No that wasn't fair. She wondered what her life would have been like if she'd fallen in love with someone nice, someone like John with his steel spine and unconquerable honour. Someone who opened doors and rose when she did... Ha. She'd probably be married with three children living in some white picket fenced house with one of those ridiculous labra-doodles by now. No, plenty of men were sweet and kind, gentlemanly and honourable... Sherly had never been any of that, but he was always exciting. Asshole.

She clearly remembered the day he'd mentioned. Pierce, God there was a guy she hadn't thought about in years, she wondered what he was up too now. Probably still playing soccer, he really was very good. He'd invited her out on what she had assumed was a date, Sherlock had watched in vague, glazed-eyed amusement as she got ready that afternoon... she must have looked to stupid to him. Less than two hours later of course she was back home, hopelessly heartbroken in the way only a young woman can be at being passed over for a blond with larger breasts a slimmer waist and a frighteningly lower IQ. Thinking about it, that was probably the night that did her in, ruined her for everyone else... Sherlock Holmes probably didn't even register what she looked like. He'd asked curiously why it was that anyone would be all that interested in a large pair of plastic breasts, they served no useful purpose what so ever. He couldn't understand how anyone could stand to be in the company of some vapid empty-headed bimbo, surely Talis, with her vast general knowledge and relatively (oh yes, he did use the word relatively) keen mind would be a far better choice?

That had done it. Handsome, check. Intelligent, check. Interesting and exciting, always! More interested in her mind than the fact that she had broad Welsh hips and shoulders? Good God where do I sign? Of course at twenty she couldn't even begin to understand exactly how different he was from everyone else, and not always in the best of ways.

In his defence, Sherlock had been almost as uncomfortable about the whole business as Talis eventually became. He often felt that there were things he should understand instinctively that just weren't coming to him. Not understanding things made him surly and petulant, often driving him to be even sharper and shorter than usual. He hadn't wanted her to go, for all her puzzling quirks and confusing emotions, she was a like a big anthropomorphised comfy blankie... She entertained him when he was bored, was happy to cook and clean (to a point), and had never once yelled at him for keeping body parts in the fridge, even though he knew she'd once jumped into the shower and trod on a cow's intestine. He couldn't remember what the experiment had been exactly, but she'd cried out and he'd hurried in to find her sitting, shaking on the floor wrapped in a towel. She _**had **_made him clean that one up, but she hadn't yelled.

"Talis...?" A timid little knock sounded on her door and she recognised John's voice. "Can I come in?"

"Course," she called out, forcing a brightness that she didn't really feel.

"He said you hit him..."

She pulled herself up into a sitting position to find John giving her an apologetic little smile. "He asked for it. In a convoluted, Sherlock way, honestly he sat up and begged. I think he might be a sadomasochist."

John laughed and sat on the edge of the bed. "I just came to make sure you were alright, that's all. He can be... well, I guess you know exactly how he can be."

"It's alright Jonh, I'm a big girl now." She patted his arm and gave him a brave smile. "I wasn't then, I admit... I wanted things from him that he just doesn't have. He can no more love me than sprout wings and fly."

"Do you really believe that? All his 'high functioning sociopath' stuff?" John asked with a raised eyebrow. "He just... sometimes, when he's relaxed he seems almost like everyone else."

"That's the trap, John. It's not that he doesn't want to feel, if he can work out what you want, he'll do it, but it doesn't come naturally to him. For friends that probably works just fine. He'd never betray you, because he knows he shouldn't. He'll protect you as best he can, he'll help you and listen to you... but he's doing it because it's in the rules, not because he feels it. You can't love like that..." She sighed and looked down at her hands. "And the worst thing in the world you can do is convince yourself that you can change him. He's got an incredible will, if he could change he'd have changed himself by now."

"I can't believe that... and looking at him with you, at what you do to him when you're not fighting,"

"Don't." She held up her hand firmly. "What you're about to say is cruel. You don't mean to be, I know you don't, you're the sweetest man alive and if I had any brains I'd be mooning over you instead..." with a slightly apologetic kiss on the cheek she gently pushed him up off the bed and towards the door. "I've really got a lot of work to do, John. Dinner should be ready by seven, but you'll have to dish up yourselves... I'll be eating in here."

"Don't hide away in here, Talis," John told her, pausing at the door. "You're too good to waste away cooking dinners for the weird guys who live upstairs. Go out. Have fun."

"Believe it or not I actually prefer it in here," she patted her pile of books and scribbled notes. "These guys I understand just fine. Real people are... complicated."

As John closed the door and headed back up the stairs he couldn't help thinking that she sounded quite a bit like Sherlock there towards the end. More comfortable with the facts she could quantify and control than the sloppy, contradictory nature of her fellow human beings. "You've done a right number on that woman." He announced, standing next to the couch where Sherlock lay looking at the ceiling.

"She did a number on herself. Have you ever known me to not be upfront about what I am?"

"That's not the point."

"Then what is?" He opened his eyes and looked up at John, who could have sworn he actually looked curious.

"The social contract is that when someone cares about you, you owe them a certain amount of consideration. You don't have to lie to her, but you treat her no differently that the cops who are awful to you. She cooks for us for crying out loud, doesn't that deserve some sort of kindness in return?"

Sherlock sat up straight and swung his legs down off the couch, looking up at John with his cold, distant eyes. "You've completely missed the point, as usual!"

"What point? That you see-saw wildly from bonding with her over your inflated IQ's and then slap her in the face as hard as you can manage? What the hell kind of point are you trying to make?"

"She's distracting, if I lose focus occasionally it's to be expected and it wont matter in the end anyway..." he started pacing, his fingers clicking at his sides like a nervous tick John had never noticed before.

"Are you saying you're trying to be nice to her?" John asked with a raised eyebrow, surprised but undeniably pleased, if he was putting in the effort at least there was some hope of...

"No, you utter moron! What would be the point of that? What? Dinners for two and a grizzly crime scene after? Nice sloppy one? I bet she'd love the be-headings, those are really exciting! John," he closed the distance between them and glared down at his smaller friend. "we can't do this again."

"... you forget yourself, don't you...? You forget to be rude to her. You're actively trying to make her hate you. Good God man, why?" John pointed over his shoulder at the opening to the stairs. "That is quite possibly the only chance you're ever going to have, you know that don't you? The rest of us can afford to fuck up a little, we've got options but you don't. What he hell do you think you're achieving here?"

"We... take time away from each others work. Our brains stagnate in each others company..."

"That is the most incredible bullshit I've ever heard! I can't hold my end in an argument with you on anything more complex that the recipe for pavlova, and you keep me around."

"You're a good sounding board. You ask brilliantly stupid questions and in answering them I get ideas. Talis never asks stupid questions..."

"Just hard ones that you can't answer, like why exactly you're being so bloody stupid about this?"

"Because last time she left I replaced her with cocaine!" Sherlock exploded angrily, throwing his arms in the air. "I spent three and a half years unable to remember my own name half the time and nearly rotted my brain into jelly just to get some relief from the boredom! The suffocating, agonising BOREDOM of being me!"

"... you really were an addict? I thought Lestrade was being an ass..."

"In the most obsessive and dangerous way. It made me stupid, just like everyone else. I could entertain myself for hours watching daytime T.V as long as I was high." He stopped pacing and looked around as though seeing the room for the first time. "I spent a whole day cleaning once... and God help me I thought it was brilliantly fun, watching soap bubbles popping and all the piles of books seemed to tidy themselves. I reduced myself to the intellectual capacity of a chimp because I couldn't acclimatise to not having someone around to entertain me."

"Did you ever think maybe you just missed her?" John suggested quietly.

"Missed... aren't you listening? Of course I missed her! Her brain is as skittery as a junked up humming bird, she could turn the making of breakfast into an argument about fluidic tension!"

"Then why didn't you go after her?"

"Go after her? She left. When people leave it's usually because they want to be away from you. It's fairly self explanatory."

John just stood shaking his head helplessly. "You're hopeless. Totally hopeless."


	3. It's 3 am, Go Away 3

.

.

.

Lestrade grumbled and reached for his mobile. Donovan glared at him but he pointedly ignored her. The damn thing was gone, and there was no getting around it... he needed Holmes.

'_New Case. Missing Da Vinci. Check your e-mail_' he typed into his phone and sent it to a number he'd long since memorized.

'_It had to be humanities didn't it? Be with you in an hour_' came the reply moments later.

Lestrade had long since given up being surprised that Sherlock never seemed to sleep. He always answered promptly, any time of the day or night, it was like he had an internal radar for interesting crime. He'd be getting shit from Donovan for days, but she wasn't the one with the higher-ups breathing down her neck about a missing masterpiece!

.

Talis' bedroom door sprang open on its creaky hinges and she half sat up, pulling a foot and a half long mag-light from her bedside table and brandished it like a club, squinting to see who was there without her glasses.

"Stop it. I need you to look at this." Sherlock sat on the edge of the bed and thrust a print out under her nose.

"Sher... what time is it?" Talis mumbled, dropping the light onto her lap and rubbing her eyes.

"Three a.m, please, look."

She sighed and sat up, reaching out to take the paper from his hands and stared at it. "Sherly... is this... I've never seen this one before..."

"Can you identify it? From this?" Sherlock asked intently.

"What? From a print out? No, Sherlock no one could, and I'm not an art historian... I can see what it's meant to be but..."

"But what? This is your thing..."

"It doesn't work like that Sherlock! God, what you want is like me asking you to identify a chemical by a photo of the stain it left on the carpet. You could have a pretty good guess but there's no way to be sure and you **KNOW** about chemicals! When it comes to this kind of art... I'm an impassioned amateur, not an expert." She ran her fingers over the image, a sketch of a young mans face wearing a melancholy expression. "It's beautiful though..."

"How much would it be worth?" Sherlock asked, disappointed in her lack of help but pleased at least that she didn't try to fake it.

"Ah, there aren't a lot of sketches, and more than half of the ones we have are doodles of priests buggering altar boys in the margins of his note books so... A finished sketch like this, I mean it's perfectly preserved, not even a discoloration... I'd say a minimum of fifty million dollars."

"Fifty million?" Sherlock raised an eyebrow looking down at the picture.

"I'd pay that much just to touch it," Talis breathed.

Sherlock looked at her carefully for a moment before finally making his offer. "If you'll help me on the case... I might be able to arrange it..."

"What...? What case? What's going on?"

"This was discovered a few weeks ago, kept very quiet, it went missing tonight..."

"Missing! They've lost it?" She squeaked, her shoulders tensing.

"It's unverified... the owner found it amongst some things he inherited from his grandfather. Stupid sod kept it in his house safe... Police can't work out whether they're dealing with a real theft or some sort of elaborate hoax."

"What kind of selfish prick keeps a possible Da Vinci in his house? No one has the right to do that!" She snapped angrily, only to look slightly abashed when he gave her an amused look. "Alright, fine. What do you need me to do?"

"Come with me, be your charming self, fill in the gaps the morons leave... run interference should I need to do something... devious." His eyes were shining in the half light and even in her newly reinforced cynicism, she couldn't help feel a little thrill at seeing him so animated.

"I'm not a consultant, Sherly..."

"You're my consultant. To me, this" he tapped the print out with one long pale finger, "this is just a piece of paper... you can situate it for me. Besides, John grunted and rolled over."

Talis giggled and reached for her dress which was flopped over the back of her desk chair. "I'll be out in a minute. I didn't really want to sit through another Abbey Theater rehash lecture anyway." She was dressed and pulling on a pair of soft leather boots before she realized her heart was racing and she took a deep breath to try to get it under control. She needed to calm the hell down... it was not part of the job to make herself crazy. When she opened the door, a light jacket over her arm and a brown satchel slung across her body, he was standing there fidgeting.

"Come on, come one, come on!" He bounced lightly on the balls of his feet and hurried her towards the front door.

"God, you're like a little kid at Christmas. You do know there might be a Da Vinci missing, right?"

"You should see me when we've got a serial killer," He grinned before really thinking about it. Talis looked at him seriously for a moment as he shut and locked the door behind them. "Sorry."

"I suppose even you need a hobby."

"John tells me I need to work on thinking before I speak. It's just a distraction I usually don't have time for." He hailed them a cab and let her climb in first.

"I remember... I used to tell everyone your filter was broken, that you just didn't know how not to say exactly what you thought." She arranged her bag and jacket on her lap, glancing over at him trying not to look as shy as she felt.

"I believe that's what Mrs Hudson would refer to as a... porky."

Talis snorted a little trying not to laugh. "You sound so strange when you say things like that... they don't roll off you right."

"I suppose you would know, being a doctor of literature... how does that work exactly?"

"I don't even think they know, to be honest. I think it has to do with how many times in your academic career you've written the word 'Shakespeare'". He chuckled with her and then sat in companionable silence the rest of the way.

'_Pull your shit together, you stupid girl. High-functioning sociopath, you took three years of psych to work out what that meant, remember? It means no matter how cute that smile looks, there's nothing behind it._' She spoke harshly to herself, willing her eyes to remain locked on the fake gold buckle that held her bag closed.

"How would the sketch be dated?" he asked out of the blue as they were pulling up.

Talis started a little at the sound of his voice and shook her head to clear it. "Umm, with difficulty, really. Da Vinci was kind of... well I guess he was a bit like you. He was so far beyond everyone else, I mean the man sketched out plans for a helicopter that would have worked if he'd just had an engine to power it. He was surrounded by... well by monkeys, at least compared to him. Mean, cruel monkeys who made his life miserable. He didn't really keep records of his work, of his ideas... There were a few techniques I could put on a time line for you but as far as dates go, the information just isn't there."

"How would it be authenticated exactly?"

"Close comparison with his other works, but Sherlock, I can't do that for you. This is not the kind of art I work with. Find me Loves Labors Won and I'll be able to tell you pretty damn accurately whether or not Shakespeare wrote it but this is different." She shrugged helplessly.

"You can identify someone by their prose alone?" Shakespeare asked, he'd never admit it but he was at least a little impressed.

"Well, not everyone instantly or anything, but yeah. Give me enough material and some time to work with it..."

"How confident are you about that?"

"Uh, fairly, I guess. I mean, with Shakespeare or Bacon or Yeats, ninety nine percent. Regular people would be a little harder, not having as developed a personal style but people like particular words when they write. They'll come back to particular forms and sounds, some like sentences to all be the same length, that kind of thing." She smiled when she stopped, he was watching her carefully. "Why are you looking at me like that?"

"What about other things... how much can you tell about a person from their writing?"

"Depends on how much there is to know and what they're writing. Use of personal pronouns, writing in first or third person, it's all like a road map to how the writer thinks and feels, the things they know and how they use that... why?"

"Deduction..." he mumbled. "You're doing with words on a page what I do with clues... with science in reality..." He stared hard at her for a moment before a thought occurred to him. "Would it work with spoken words? In conversation?"

"Hey, I am not a psychologist. You're starting to get into the realm of profiling..."

"Isn't that what you do? Profile Shakespeare?"

"Well... sort of," she got out of the cab and waited while he paid. "It's not just about the words though, when people speak it just comes out. Writing includes composition, it shows more about how the writer is thinking, how he wants you to think he thinks..."

"So you couldn't do it in conversation?"

"I... I could try applying the same principles we use in literary analysis I suppose, but I can't do it on the fly. I'm not a genius, Sherlock, and I don't have an eidetic memory. I'd need transcripts of the conversation to work with..."

"I can get you those," He said confidently, pulling a small digital recorder out of his pocket. "Consider tonight a trial run. No pressure."

"Ha! You don't know the meaning of the phrase, and it certainly doesn't apply to a missing Da Vinci!"

"Alleged Da Vinci." Lestrade said, striding down the front steps and appraising Talis coolly. "New assistant? What happened to Dr Watson?"

"He grunted something about three a.m and rolled over, but since we're not dealing with a dead person a medical doctor isn't as much help as usual. You brought me a missing piece of art, I brought you a doctor of history and literature." He swooped past Lestrade, his coat flaring dramatically as he swerved easily around Donovan who was deliberately standing in his way.

"Eight years and he's still doing that." Talis said with a slight smile. "Talis Williams. Please, please don't call me doctor, I've had enough of people asking me random medical questions."

"Pleasure, miss Williams," Lestrade actually grinned at her as he shook her hand. "How did he drag you into this? I don't imagine there are that many academics he'd have access to at this hour." There was a cheeky little hint in his tone, just enough to let her know he was interested in her answer in more than a professional capacity.

"I rent a room from Mrs Hudson. He bounced into my room an hour ago waving an unknown Da Vinci and talking about a theft..." He still hadn't let go of her hand and she blushed... they were still shaking. "How could I resist?"

"Well, come on through, I imagine he's had enough time to upset everyone by now." Lestrade turned and led her up the steps, through a small, ordinary entry way and into a living room crawling with police, most of whom were glaring at Sherlock's back as he fluttered around getting in the way and looking at everything. "Anything?"

"Many things. Go away."

Talis laughed softly and looked about. "What was it doing here? A Da Vinci, even an unsubstantiated one, should be kept in a more secure location than this."

"It was only discovered last week..." Lestrade said, and something about his tone made her look at him curiously.

"That sounded like an excuse, what aren't you saying?"

"Well... it turns out the owners might have received some bad advice... from a police help line. It seems that they rang when they found it, not knowing what else to do, and... they were told to lock it up and they'd be contacted when the department had made arrangements for someone to come and look at it."

"You..." she looked around at the walls, the open windows and the small, store-bought safe in the corner which had been easily overcome. "The police told them to keep it here? Here! That safe is a condensation magnet! It's not air tight, the exhaust from every passing car was coming in through those windows and rotting the paper where it sat! One, ten second phone call to the British museum and they'd have had someone on the doorstep within an hour!"

"I suggest to find whoever took that call and put them into protective custody," Sherlock said dryly, having come over to stand behind Talis, his face amused by her fit of temper.

"You think whoever took the call leaked the information?" Lestrade asked.

"It's certainly an avenue worth pursuing, but I'd be more concerned about Talis finding them and extracting a confession under torture." He flashed them both a grin before slipping back into business mode. "The break-in is clean. That means one of two things, a professional who's brilliant or an inside job such that there is no way to distinguish between evidence and chaff."

"Do you think the owners did it?" Lestrade asked.

"... No. Talis, would you be so kind as to examine the contents of the safe?" Sherlock asked.

"Oi! That's evidence, she can't go rooting around in there!" Donovan objected, but Lestrade waved her off, handing Talis a pair of gloves.

"She's got a doctorate in history, Donovan, she knows what contamination means. if you think you can help, have it at."

Talies crouched down, slipping her jacket and satchel off and putting them aside. "This all came from the same lot? Some sort of inheritance?"

"That's what the owners said. Some relative they'd never even heard of died and this is what they got. Lawyer had a look over it and thought the Da Vinci looked real enough, advised them to have it looked at." Lestrade told her.

She reached in and pulled the box forward, flicking through it piece by piece. "Who exactly died...?"

"I'm not sure, we could have someone look it up for you... why?"

"Sherlock, dig out my phone, speed dial three and hold it up for me." He did as she asked without comment, and Lestrade watched in fascination as he didn't even make a face, just pressed the speed dial and held the phone next to her head. "Patrick? Yes... yes I know it's early but you're going to want to get up. I've got something for you. Oh grow up, you perv. I'm sitting on a floor in south London looking at what might be the biggest find in a hundred years, flicking through it now I can see a Newton signature, a Marlow... and God help me I think this is an original stage direction of Twelfth Night. Yes THE Twelfth Night! I wouldn't call you for an undergrad's revamp would I? I'm going to give you to the police, they'll give you the address... hurry, honestly if you could see this room... I'm surprised the paper hasn't liquefied!" Sherlock handed the phone to Lestrade without a word and squatted down beside Talis.

"How big?" He asked.

"Big... Big, big. Bigger than any single literary find I've ever seen, or even heard of in this city." her hands were trembling slightly as she looked down at the loosely bound folio in her hands. "This is Twelfth Night, Sherlock..." she ran her hands down the margin of the paper and flicked through to the last page. There, at the bottom, in clear, barely faded ink, was the signature of the great bard himself. She let her thumb move over it lightly, bitting down on her bottom lip. "Look at the scrawl, the minor corrections... two separate ink bottles, you can see the change in the colour... This could be THE Twelfth Night! The first draft copy... I feel a little dizzy..."

"That gentleman said he'll be half an hour," Lestrade told her. He'd managed to wring out of the excited Patrick that he was in fact a department head at the British museum and he'd be there as soon as was humanly possible with everything you could possibly need, including an armed escort, to move a 'treasure of that magnitude'.

"Good... fetch me a blanket to put over the box. It'll absorb any moisture and keep out the heavier pollutants. Every minute this paper is exposed to air it's being eaten away." She took the standard 'shock' blanket she as offered and tucked it around the box carefully.

"How likely is it that those are real?" Lestrade asked curiously.

"There are too many other tests to be run to say, but I can tell you that they pass initial inspection. The paper feels right, the right consistency, the ink is right, and the smell... Everything I can do here on the floor in someone's living room passes, but it'll be a while before we know for sure."

"How long?" Sherlock asked.

"Well, we can age it pretty well from the paper and ink within forty eight hours so we'll be able to say conclusively when it was done. As for who... I'll want to work with it for at least a week and even then there will be argument for years. This kind of thing makes and breaks academic careers. If I say it's real, three dozen up and comers will try to make a name for themselves by proving it isn't, if I say it isn't, just as many will want to prove that it is." She looked at him apologetically. "I'm sorry Sherlock, but you're not going to get official confirmation any time soon..."

"I don't need official confirmation, Talis, I need to know if it's real." He returned her look seriously. "Can you tell me if it's real?"

Talis looked at the box, biting her lower lip for a moment and then back up at Sherlock's ice cool eyes. "Three days. All the samples can be taken today, you'll have the dating by tomorrow night, and I can give you the Shakespeare in three days. The others are more hit and miss, it'll depend on who else I can find to work on them."

"The Shakespeare will be enough, one verification suggests strongly the others are also real. One fake, throws the lot in doubt." He snapped his fingers and stood, surprising everyone in the room by offering Talis his hand to help her up. "Your knee." he said, slightly self consciously by way of explanation.

"... Sherlock I busted my knee last year... how could you,"

"You limp, just a little on the left leg, and you winced when you crouched down." He interrupted her.

"Thank you," she flashed him a small smile.

"What for?"

"Noticing," she said.

"I notice everything."

She laughed and put a hand on his arm before she could stop herself. "But usually you hang on to that information until it's useful to you."

Sherlock's eyebrows furrowed so much that they almost met between his eyes. "It was useful. It told me you should be helped up to avoid exacerbating a cartilage condition which could still put you on crutches if you're not careful."

Lestrade nudged Sherlock with an elbow and stage whispered, "When a beautiful girl thanks you for something, you say 'you're welcome' and see if you can squeeze a kiss out of it... don't argue, it's counter productive." He grinned at Talis over Sherlock's shoulder and she blushed again.


	4. Sidewalk SideSwipe 4

.

.

.

Patrick had longish blond hair, blue eyes and a smile he obviously spent time on, as his teeth were dazzling and unnaturally perfect. He was met at the door by Talis and Lestrade, who'd been waiting for him while Sherlock irritated Donovan some more by poking around in the kitchen and back yard!

"You know I'd get up at any time for the day or night for you V," He said as he trotted up the stairs, leaving his little armed guard in the van and carrying a hefty looking case. "But this had better be worth it. I've got a ton of journals arriving from the colonies today..."

Talis laughed and took his offered hand, which instead of shaking Patrick used to pull her in closer and kiss her lightly on each cheek.

"V?" Sherlock asked from behind them, making Patrick start slightly. "Surrounding yourself with humanities students who can't remember your name now?"

"Oh... Sherlock this is Patrick, he's not exactly a student. He runs the literary culture division at the museum." Talis began to explain, but Patrick had pulled himself together enough to flash that smile and step forward confidently.

"The V is for Venus... one day, I'm sure, Talis will consent to come work at the museum with me and be my divine inspiration."

Sherlock shook his hand, his face remaining blank. "Yes... Well... that was perfectly sickening, wasn't it?" He glanced at Lestrade who was trying to smother his grin, but it was peaking out the sides. "How can you afford all that dental work? Not to mention what you've managed to do to your hair in the space of ten minutes... here's a hint, she's never dated anyone with longer hair, your teeth creep her out and if you lift any more heavy things in your underpants your collogues are going to start impersonating you with an Austrian accent."

He did open his mouth to continue but was brought up short when Talis slapped him sharply across the face. "Behave." She said firmly, as though speaking to a naughty dog, then offered her arm to Patrick, who took it and led her inside.

Sherlock looked at Lestrade. "Was it something I said?"

"Isn't it always?"

"Business with the teeth too much?" Sherlock asked.

"They are creepy... I liked the Schwarzenegger reference though."

"The man looks like he's been stung all over his body by bee's."

"You'll get no argument from me." Lestrade held up his hands, still grinning and both men went back inside.

Patrick was fussing officiously and Talis was running interference with the police who weren't too happy about the idea of some crusty academic man-handling their evidence. As Lestrade waded in to clear up the confusion, Talie shot Sherlock and irritated glare. The look he returned was perfectly innocent and emotionless which only served to irritate her more.

"Alright!" Lestrade finally yelled. "For the advancement of the case, we need to know if these things are real... The police department trusts that the museum is capable of maintaining the chain of evidence... correct?"

Patrick nodded. "I'd like a small escort if possible. There is more here than I thought, we need to get it all back safely and quickly and into a humidity controlled environment. London air is hell on old paper."

"Of course, I can send a squad car with you and they'll stay for the time being to offer any help you might need."

Talis made to follow Patrick, avoiding Sherlock's eyes. "Where are you going?" he asked.

"With Patrick to work on the verification. You said you wanted it fast..."

"You can't go yet, I still need you." He said absently but firmly.

"For what? You're perfectly capable of being rude to everyone without my being here. I'm not a detective, I'm a literary scholar."

"You're all I've got. I need to talk to the owner, then the lawyer."

"You need to learn that you aren't always going to get what you want. Record it and I'll decode it for you later when I come home. I expect I'll be late, have lunch out and then last nights left-overs for dinner. Don't let John finish the pie, he's given himself indigestion twice this week on my deserts already..." She turned and followed Patrick out.

Both Sherlock and Lestrade could clearly hear Patrick's rather plaintive "You _**live**_ with that man?"

Lestrade was looking at Sherlock speculatively when he turned round and Sherlock managed to ignore him for almost a full minute before losing his temper. "What?"

"Oh nothing... she lives in your house, keeps you fed and now does half your 'homework' for you..."

"You're point?"

"She said eight years..." Lestrade pointed out carefully.

"And?"

"Eight years since she's seen you... Sherlock, unlike some geniuses I could name, I actually remember when things happen to me. Cops are good with dates and times... Eight years ago,"

"I know what happened,"

Knowing full well it wouldn't be well received, but feeling that he had to do it anyway, Lestrade reached out and put a companionable hand on Sherlock's shoulder. "Are you alright? As alright as you can be anyway?"

"I'm fine. You know very well that I'm clean, you're little spats of temper and ransacking my apartment not withstanding." It sounded spiteful coming out, but Lestrade did notice that Sherlock hadn't shrugged off his hand angrily as he might have done two years earlier.

"I know you are, and I'm sorry... I admit that was petty of me. I was angry with you for running off on your own, I can't have you doing that, but I shouldn't have suggested you were using." Lestrade sighed and let his hand drop. "For five years now I've watched you getting better Sherlock,"

"Are you suggesting Talis is bad for my health?"

"I'm suggesting that there's no way she wont affect it... but buggered if I know if it'll be for better or worse. Just watch yourself, hey?"

Sherlock frowned as he looked out of the window to see Talis climbing into the museum van beside Patrick. Stupid man. He looked ridiculous and spent way too much money on his teeth. She'd never be able to put up with him for very long, he was totally insufferable. "I wouldn't worry too much while she's still concerned about your eating habits..." Lestrade said. "As long as her mothering instincts are still working, you're alright. If she stops feeding you, you know you're really in the dog house."

"That doesn't work," Sherlock said absently, watching the van move off up the street. "When she moved out she left two weeks worth of precooked meals in the fridge."

"Ah..." Lestrade said knowingly. "That means you were meant to notice and go after her."

"You're the second person to say that to me... why chase someone who doesn't want to be around you?"

"That's not the question Sherlock, the question is why would someone who hates you so much they ran out on you, leave you two weeks worth of meals in the fridge?"

.

John had rolled over and opened his eyes at the truly obscene hour of ten a.m. He hadn't managed a layin like that since moving in! He could vaguely remember Sherlock trying to wake him at three for something... had he said the Da Vinci code was on telly? No, that couldn't be right. Downstairs he found that Talis had pinned a note on the fridge saying that Sherlock had dragged her out on some care or other and that they'd probably be late. At the bottom of the note was her mobile number 'in case you need anything'. He was a grown man, what could he possibly need? He shrugged at her mothering nature and swiped the last of the pie for breakfast, knowing full well that both Talis and Mrs Hudson would be quite cross with him... but they weren't here!

Some hours later, painfully bored and wondering what the hell everyone else was doing, John reached for his phone to call Sherlock and try to get in on the case. He was pretty sure his friend would make him work for it, but he was also confident that Sherlock wouldn't be able to resist having him there to gloat at about his deductive skills. At the last moment though, he decided to message Talis instead.

_ 'Having fun? Ready to break for lunch?'_

_ 'I wish. Stuck the museum all day working on some doc's 4 hmself. Craving noodles!'_ She replied a few minutes later.

_'Your wish is my command. B there in ½ hour. White Box Noodles, my treat'_

_'Tell Sarah I'm sry. I might have to marry u! C U soon!'_ John laughed at the message as he pulled on his coat. At the mention of Sarah, he thought to message her and ask her to join them but she replied that she was busy at the clinic all day and took a rain check.

Half an hour later, John strolled through the Museum, asking every third guard he saw for directions to where Talis Williams was likely to be. Finally he arrived at a set of doors marked 'employees only', where he asked the resident guard if he could duck his head through and let Talis know he was there. The guard did it for him and then, with a stony face, ushered John inside.

"John!" Talis was bent over a back-lit table staring at several pages of documents. "Come on through!"

"I thought the gorilla at the door was going to frisk me there for a moment."

"He's just chaffing because we've all been a bit mad today." She gestured down at the pages she was working on and john squinted trying to make out the old writing.

"'my love is all as hungry as the sea and can digest as much'... is that Shakespeare?" John asked.

Talis looked pleased and nodded. "Twelfth Night... THE Twelfth night John... the original draft of the play... at least we think it might be." She was bouncing on the balls of her feet excitedly.

"Would you like me to go get your lunch and bring it back? You seem quite rapt in all this," John started to as but Talis shook her head.

"I'll be back in an hour or so Patrick!" She said loudly, and the blond muscle man working towards the back of the room lifted his head to watch her put her arm through John's offered one and head towards the door. "Keep an eye on the Masspectromoter! Message me when it's finished it's run." Effectively ensuring that he knew he wasn't invited. Once they were outside she let out a huge huff of breath and leaned against John's side. "Thank you! He's been worse than usual today!"

"Who? Blondy?"

Talis giggled and nodded. "Patrick Moore. No relation to the astronomer, but just as persistent. He's been trying to get me to go to dinner with him all day."

"Am I here to make him jealous then?" John asked with an amused expression.

"No, just to get me out of his line of sight until something else with a skirt walks in front of him! Ungh, men suck!" She stopped and looked at him sheepishly. "Sorry, you know I don't mean you..."

"Hm? Oh, don't worry, I love hearing about how all other men are horrible, evil bastards. Just follow it up with how lovely I am and we're all set."

She laughed as they made their way down the street towards White Box Noodles. Coming up from the other direction, they saw Sherlock striding confidently towards them.

"How the hell did you know where we were?" John asked curiously, but as always, impressed.

"Talis is obsessed with noodles." Sherlock said shortly, but when Talis gave him a flat look he shrugged, "also I tracked your phone."

"My... what? I don't have a smart phone!" She objected.

"Well, when I say 'your' phone, what I mean is Lestrade's phone which I stole and put in your handbag."

"Why in God's name would you do that?" She demanded, rummaging around in her bag, finally coming up with Lestrade's phone.

"So I could find you when I needed to, obviously."

"And you needed me when I came out for lunch?" She said sarcastically, looking through Lestrade's phone for a number to call so she could let him know she had it.

"Actually I needed to talk to that peacock you left with this morning. Lestrade said very old thefts would be a pain to track down, but I'm assuming that it that box of relic's had been pinched, someone as enmeshed in the historical literature community as himself would have heard about it."

"His name is Patrick, Sherlock, and you can go down to the museum and ask him, I'm sure he'd love to see you, but John promised to buy me lunch and I'm not going back to work until I've had my noodles!" She even stomped her foot like a petulant child.

"Come on, there's no point standing on the sidewalk having an argument, let's go inside and get some food." John suggested, taking a step towards the door.

He hardly noticed the squeal of the tires, it was so common a sound in London. The first he really knew of anything being wrong, Talis had shouldered him hard sending him flying through the doorway of the cafe and turned to tackle Sherlock to the ground behind a parked car. A heartbeat later, a huge SUV mounted the curb where they'd been standing, collected a post box and sped away up the street without slowing down.

"What the hell was that?" John demanded, stumbling back out through the doorway, trying to get the license number of the car but missing it as it turned up a street before he could focus his eyes properly.

"Excellent question." Sherlock agreed from where he lay, pinned under Talis on the sidewalk and looking up at her curiously. "Those are hardly the reflexes of a career academic..."

"What...? Sherlock someone just tried to _**kill **_us and you're complaining about Talis' reflexes?"

"People try to kill me fairly regularly, comes with the territory, but I've never seen a Doctor of literature instinctively save two people from an attempted hit and run..." he was looking at her carefully, thinking and rethinking, analyzing and assessing.

"You're still an ungrateful cock, aren't you?" Talis grumbled, propping herself up on her hands in a half push-up and glaring down at the man she'd just saved, half wondering why she'd bothered.

Sherlock's hands flashed up and gripped her hips, stopping her from getting up any further. "What are you doing here, Talis?"

"I'm saving your life, you stupid ass!" She grated, and tried to break his grip, but he held on.

"Talis... You're well versed in a martial art you couldn't have pronounced let alone practiced eight years ago, you're physically more confident and more than any of that, you're living in my house... Someone just tried to kill us, it's time to stop playing." He stared up at her seriously, though there didn't seem to be any anger in him. "Who are you watching me for?"

"I'm not here to spy on you, Sherlock!" She told him firmly, her shoulder sagging just slightly so he knew he'd won, though _**what**_ he'd won was still in question. "I'm your bodyguard..."


	5. The Book you Requested is Unavailable 5

"I beg your pardon?" John stammered in confusion.

"Mycroft..." Sherlock hissed in annoyance and shoved at Talis, rocking her back so he was crouching on her heels. He proped himself up on his elbows and glared at her. "I knew it!That's it, John you don't get to have opinions any more, I _told _you!"

"I'm having trouble following this..." John confessed, one hand on the door jab, the other passing over his eyes. "You work for the government?"

Talis shook her head. "Not directly, at least not really. Myc said Sherlock was in trouble, again, and he wouldn't accept any help, again."

"What are you doing working for him anyway?" Sherlock demanded. "How do you even know each other? You certainly weren't any kind of operative when I met you!"

"Mycroft came looking for me..." She said quietly. "I think now he'd been watching me... watching us, since the beginning. He wanted me to come back..."

"Mycroft wanted you come back," Sherlock was frowning, then his face smoothed out and he looked at her carefully, "you and Mycroft, is that it?"

"What? No! Jesus, Sherly!You really are an unbelievable ass you know that!" She stood and kicked his foot, hard. "I came back because you were in trouble and no one else wanted to deal with your shit!"

Sherlock scrambled to his feet and got right in her face. "Neither did you, if memory serves."

"Does it matter to you at all that I just saved your life?" She demanded, her voice rising in pitch.

"Does it matter to you at all that I despise my brother, and you've been in constant contact with him for eight years!"

Their faces were inches apart. Talis' fists were clenched tightly at her sides and Sherlock's shoulder shook with the force of emotion inside him. John watched in fascination, holding his breath for the obvious conclusion... but it never came. Like a slow motion car wreck, John watched Sherlock shake his head and back away. Talis' eyes teared up and she struggled to breathe, she'd thought it was coming too...

"You don't even..." she shook her head and backed away a few steps. "You really can't understand what you were meant to do..." she turned on her heel and fled up the street.

Sherlock watched her go, his shoulders still shaking and all John could do was grip the door jab and wonder if there was ever going to be a way to fix this mess.

"You were supposed to kiss her..." he said at last, when he could no longer stand the silence.

"What?" Sherlock asked distractedly.

John sighed and shook his head. "Maybe Talis is right, maybe you really can't feel anything..." To John's surprised, Sherlock actually looked slightly hurt by that. "You were meant to kiss her, man! The moment was there, the passion the... didn't you _feel_ it?"

"Actually I feel vaguely sick."

"That's the adrenalin, you're body knows what's going on even if you don't. God, Sherlock..."

"Is that what you'd have done? Kiss her?"

John shook his head. "No... I'd have chased her down eight years ago and begged her to stay."

Sherlock looked off up the street. Talis was long gone. "Why did she have to be working for Mycroft..."

"Your brother spent the last eight years training the woman who loves you to be your bodyguard..." John conceded, "it's unusual I'll grant you, but let's face it, it is _your_ family."

"Not good?" Sherlock asked, his eyes still searching the empty street for someone who wants there.

"Bit not good, yeah."

"Bugger."

"I'm done."

"Talis calm down, what happened?"

"Unnngh! SUV, tried to collect the three of us on Lincon street. The boys are fine."

"...That's not what I meant..."

It wasn't the first time Mycroft has surprised her with a blind-siding interest in her emotional well-being. It didn't happen often, and she was always dumbfounded, but comforted as well.

"He knows. He knows everything and I can't go back there... I can't..."

"Alright, it's alright." He sounded distracted and worried, but he knew when not to push her. "Go _home_ Talis." His emphasis was unmistakable and Talis stopped walking and looked around.

"Thank you," she said carefully. "Will you be returning?"

Mycroft chuckled softly. "Not today. Stay by the phone, I'll be in touch as soon as I can."

Talis hung up and began to double back, then swung a wide arc around the city centre, walking quickly all the time. It takes a very long time to get anywhere when you're trying to determine if you're being followed. In the end, her efforts were for nothing... Strong arms gripped her from behind and a cloth was pressed firmly over her mouth as she put her foot on the first step that led up into the grand old building. In a panic she fumbled for her phone and hit send on a message that had been sitting in her phone for years.

_Myc – the book you requested is unavailable._

People walked in and out of the state library, the blustery autumn wind whipping at their clothing and rushing past their ears with a dull roar. No one noticed Talis being gently bundled into a black SUV...

"She's not here." John said having ducked about downstairs while Sherlock made his way up to the second floor of their apartment.

"Did you really think she would be?"

John opened his mouth to reply but stopped when he heard the front door open and close followed by heavy footsteps on the stairs. When he looked over, Mycroft was standing at the head of the stairs, his face grave.

"You," Sherlock growled.

Mycroft said nothing, he just held out his phone. Shelock snatched it in irritation and looked down at the screen. For a few seconds he seemed confused, then realisation dawned and he looked at Mycroft. "you did this..."

"What? What is it?" John demanded. He caught the phone easily when Sherlock tossed it to him and looked down at the message. _Myc – the book you requested is unavailable_. "What does it mean?"

"You're the one who drove her away, little brother," Mycroft said quietly. "The more relevant issue now is getting her back."

"What does this mean?" John demanded louder, growing increasingly more agitated.

"It's Talis' emergency message," Mycroft said calmly,

"It means someone took her." Sherlock finished. "She's the book..."

"What? Who? Who took her?"

"CCTV shows her being bundled into the same SUV that was used in the drive-by this morning. The plates are faked of course and we lost the vehicle in the warehouse district. I've been campaigning for better camera coverage down there for years." Mycroft told them.

"We have to call the police," John said, digging in his pocket for his phone, "Lestrade will,"

"Lestrade will flood the area with police, and we'll lose them." Sherlock said firmly, grabbing his jacket. "He wants me, if he sees anyone else he'll bolt and we may never find her."

"He?" John was shaking his head, his phone still in his hand." He, who?"

"Isn't it obvious?" Sherlock and Mycroft said softly together. The brother's looked at each other and shook their heads wearing similar condescending expressions. Sherlock pushed past his brother and trotted down the stairs.

"Moriarty," Mycroft said and nodded his head after his brother. "Better get on after him. I'll have back-up as close as I can get it without giving anything away..."

"You care about her, don't you?" John asked.

"For a time, I thought she was going to be my sister." Mycroft told him. "When this is over, I'll set her up somewhere pleasant... perhaps it was never going to work, but you understand I had to try."


	6. Dont Startle the Deer Sherlock 6

"Do you want to talk about it?" John asked, fidgeting slightly with the hem of his coat.

Sherlock levelled a cool look at him. "Here? Now? In a taxi? A Taxi, John!"

John looked at the back of the Taxi-driver's head a felt a sudden chill. He shook it off, convinced he was being silly, but dropped the subject all the same. The silence was painful, John felt like his whole body was itching, and yet in that perverse way, he was calm as well. _You weren't traumatised by the war... you miss it._ Jesus, he was a sick puppy.

"Do we at least have something that resembles a plan?" He asked as the Taxi pulled over on the edge of the warehouse district.

"I'm sure something will come to me."

"Oh that's comforting..." John reached into his pocket and wrapped his fingers around his pistol's grip.

"Don't touch that so much, I'd rather no one know you've got it until we need it." Sherlock said without looking around.

"Which way do we go?" John asked.

"I imagine they're waiting for us, I suggest a stroll down the main access drive... I'm sure someone will pop out to fetch us." He glanced at John and coughed uncomfortably. "Thank you. For coming."

"To be honest I didn't really think about it, and it's a bit bloody late to go back now." He looked up at his friend and they shared a nervous chuckle. "I tell you what though, if you don't kiss her after this I'll be mighty disappointed."

"I wouldn't know how."

"It's not rocket science, Sherlock. If you've watched TV you know the mechanics." John scoffed.

"Alright then, I wouldn't know _when_."

"That's easy. As a general rule, if she meets your eyes for more than fives seconds, and you're standing close enough to touch her, it's time. That sick feeling in your stomach is a pretty good indicator too... just go with it."

"No wonder you people are all insane, you've trained yourselves to get horny when you feel sick." Sherlock grumbled and John nearly chocked on nothing trying to contain his laughter.

"High spirits then? I like that." The voice was high, slightly effeminate and frighteningly chipper. "Course... I'm not so sure our lady-friend here thinks it's so funny..."

Talis stumbled out of a small opening up ahead and to the right. She tripped on the ripped hem of her dress and skidded across the gravel on her knees, losing skin in the process.

"Whoooops" The voice came from inside the building, and it's owner showed no sign of coming out. "She's a bit clumsy, really."

Talis' eyes were hard and angry when she looked up, but she found Sherlock's face and if anything it seemed to piss her off all the more. When she turned her eyes to John, he put his hand on the outside of his pocket for just a moment, then let it drop again. A slight twitch in her left eye suggested she'd understood him.

"Don't expect her to get all emotional, she's been quiet as a mouse... bit disappointing really. I saved my best tricks till you got here though... wanna see?" Something happened then and Talis bowed hard over backwards and grabbed at a collar around her neck. She didn't scream, but she grunted and made choking sounds, her legs flailing in the gravel.

"Stop it!" John yelled, taking a step forward.

Sherlock grabbed his arm, and nodded at his chest... a small red dot had appeared over John's heart. "What do you want?"

"Ohhh the same thing everybody wants. The same thing she wanted... just a little bit of _attention_!"

"Then come out and let me see you."

The chuckle that echoed off the corrugated iron chilled John's blood. "But then all the mystery will be gone... have to do something to hold your interest." Talis gasped and twitched again as the collar around her neck did whatever it was designed to do. "She's a bit pissed with me now," the voice said impishly.

"I once saw her throw a potted plant at someone for misquoting Shakespeare..." Sherlock said calmly. "I hope for your sake you didn't do anything to the Da Vinci."

"Fake! Fake fake fakety fake I'm afraid. A very good fake though, do you have any idea how hard it is to track down period ink and paper? I hope you appreciate my efforts, Sherly."

"The other's too?" Sherlock asked.

"Mmm, it's a very expensive box of shit."

"When this is over... I'd start running if I were you. She takes that kind of thing quite personally."

Moriarty (for there was no doubt in Sherlock's mind that was who he was talking to) chuckled happily and John could hear him clapping his hands. "Worry not, she's got her mind on a far more valuable piece of art..."

There was silence then for almost a fully minute. "Ungh, _you_, you ninny. Honestly you're taking all the fun out of this. Well... alright, not _all_."

He activated to collar again and Talis twitched and writhed. John and Sherlock had been inching forward, and it was only then that John noticed that in her thrashing, Talis had been moving every so slowly towards them. He had no way to know if she was doing it on purpose.

"Do you like my toy? It's a dog collar, one quick zap to stop the little fuckers barking... seems it works pretty well on women too... once you ramp up the voltage."

"Let me see your face." Sherlock called.

"I just love it when you're demanding... so forceful. Unfortunately not today lover. Shouldn't do anything on the first date you can't top on the second, right?"

Talis lay gasping on the ground, her body twisted around harshly... it took John a few moments to realise that positioned as she was, he could see her face, but the man in the warehouse couldn't! She was looking directly at him, her eyes hard and determined. The arm that was twisted over her chest was also hidden from Moriarty's view. She was making the sign of a gun very subtly and looking at him intensely. After a moment, when she was sure he understood, she jerked her head up and to the left.

Without moving his head, John flicked his eyes up and caught a glint off the snipers glasses on the roof across the way. It was a long shot with a hand gun... but he'd made long shots before. He didn't need to hit the gunman as such, he just needed to force him down long enough for them to make it into the warehouse. Mycroft had promised back-up, it had to be close, if he could just get them into the warehouse they could hunker down and wait.

"So how does this end? You don't want to kill me, you wont let me see you..."

"It ends when you chose, Sherly... Chose and we can all go home."

"Chose what, exactly?"

"I'm going to take one of your toys away..." he set off Talis' collar again and she thrashed and writhed, while the red dot moved from John's chest to settle between his eyes. "You've been picking mine off for months now, it only seems fair."

Sherlock spun and looked at John wild-eyed, then down at Talis who had stopped writhing and hand forced herself up onto her knees so she could see him. "Sherlock... please..." she whimpered, clutching fist fulls of the gravel in her trembling hands. He eyed her carefully then tilted his head to the side, calculating...

"Your word. I chose, the other goes free." He said firmly.

"Oh, on me' mother's grave."

"Take her and leave me John." Sherlock said calmly.

In the blink of an eye, Talis threw one handful of stones through the warehouse doorway and the others heard Moriarty swear as he took a face full of dust and gravel. The other handful she tossed in the air around her while skidding sideways into a side-hand spring and sprinting straight at Sherlock. John, meanwhile had taken the hint, as the red dot shifted away from him, he'd pulled out his pistol and shot continuously at the rooftop while moving quickly sideways into the shadow of the building at out of the gunman's line of sight.

Sherlock grunted as Talis tackled him down, then grabbed a fistful of his jacket and hauled him bodily sideways and out of the line of fire. Before she'd stopped moving he was already struggling to sit up, his fingers working franticly to undo the collar. He tossed it out onto the roadway once it was free and the three of them pressed their backs against the building and tried to catch their breath.

"You sneaky little buggers!" Moriarty sounded amused and impressed. "I'm impressed, I admit it." Siren's sounded at either end of the road, "oop, that's my cue... gotta go."

"What the hell are you doing here?" Talis demanded angrily. "How the hell could you let him come here?" She jabbed John with and angry finger. "It's not enough I die for you, you wanted me to die for nothing? You great stupid idiot!" Her voice was going up in pitch again...

"You're not dead." Sherlock pointed out, looking curiously at her eyes, which had in fact been locked on his for almost a full three seconds.

"LUCK! And John's amazing aim!You can't run around doing this kind of shit, Sherly, Jesus, Mycroft's going to have kittens," when the little timer inside his head hit five seconds, Sherlock cut her off by lurching in with a distinct lack of grace and kissing her firmly. At first he thought she'd pull away, as she stiffened and her lips remained hard and unyielding... but then she shivered and seemed to sag against his chest in a way that wasn't entirely unpleasant. Her lips parted and softened and for a moment, with her tongue dipping into his mouth and her fingers tangling themselves in his hair, Sherlock wondered why he'd never tried this before, the whole business seemed quite agreeable.

Then the police car's screamed to a halt beside them and for Talis at least, the spell was broken. She pulled back at looked up at him, her eyes filling with tears and her bottom lip trembling terribly. "You son-of-a-bitch..." she hissed before hauling off and punching him in the face sending him sprawling. She then turned on her heel and limped off, pausing only scream some abuse at Mycroft who made the mistake of asking her if she were alright.

"Well, she seems fine, all things considered." Mycroft said, offering his brother a hand to help him up. Sherlock ignored it and struggled to his feet on his own.

"Why did she hit me? I did what you told me to do!"

John was covering his mouth with one hand, unsure whether he wanted to laugh or cry but concious of the fact that neither was really the correct response. "Actually under the circumstances I think that was probably the best you could hope for..." He looked at his friend and then pointedly at Talis' retreating back. Sherlock didn't move, he just rubbed his bruised cheek. "Oh for sobbing out loud, Sherlock! Don't make the same mistake again, man, get after her!"

"She hit me!"

"Did she break anything?" John asked.

Sherlock felt his nose and cheekbone gently, "doesn't seem so..."

"Then get after her! Go, go, go, go" John clapped his hands in rhythm with his directions.

"Does this make any sense to you?" Sherlock asked Mycroft. It was the first genial thing Mycroft could remember his brother saying to him in years.

"It's hardly my area. I'd trust Dr Watson on this one."

"Well does the five second rule still apply?" He asked.

"I think you'll have to wing it. She's pissed, but she loves you... worst comes to worst just kiss her and hope for the best." John shrugged as the two geniuses looked at him disbelievingly. "Hey, it's what the rest of us do."

Sherlock trotted off after Talis who was talking to Lestrade.

"Is that really what normal men do?" Mycroft asked once Sherlock was out of earshot.

"Don't be stupid." John snorted. "Men are total cowards, I wont make a move on a woman until I'm absolutely sure she's not going to laugh at me, but I can't very well tell him that."

"Sherlock, you alright?" Lestrade asked him as he approached.

"Oh Jesus," Talis rolled her eyes and rounded on him angrily. "When did you become a sadist? You've always been a dick but you've never been cruel before..." She glared at him, trying to push him back with her eyes, but he kept coming.

Two seconds...

"You knew." He said carefully, holding her eyes. "When I made the choice, you knew what to do. You knew what... what I was doing."

Four seconds...

Talis' eyes softened just slightly. "I guess you're just not that inscrutable." She said sarcastically.

Five seconds ticked over and this time Sherlock moved in slower, he found one of her hands with his and gripped it slightly tighter than was comfortable. He had to hunch his shoulders down to reach her mouth with his... Talis looked terrified but she didn't pull away. She trembled against him, making her feel like a wild animal he was holding in his hands, so he kept his lips soft... no sudden movements Sherlock, you'll spook the deer, he thought.

Lestrade fought the urge to cough and instead politely turned away, rubbing the back of his neck with one hand and wondering at all the ways this could blow up in his face.

"Sherly please..." Talis hissed against his lips when he finally pulled away. "Please... don't hurt me."

"Tell me what to do..."

She looked up at him helplessly.


	7. Honking Nod to Formality 7

"Sherlock, John." Lestrade greeted them both with a nod, "You two clean up quite nicely."

In truth, Sherlock looked almost exactly the same as usual, his nod towards propriety being that Talis had forced him into a tie.

"I fail to understand why this was necessary." He grumbled, referring to both the tie and the fact he'd been talking into attending this bizarre spectacle.

"That's the trouble with being a hero, Sherlock. People keep wanting to thank you. Now straighten up your tie and try not to... speak, for the next hour or so, hmm?" Lestrade looked around. "Where's miss Williams?"

"She had to finish something at the museum and then change. Mrs Hudson gave me to understand the changing might take some time."

"She's at the museum... with that museum guy...?" Lestrade asked carefully.

"Hmm? Yes, yes, the one with the teeth." Sherlock clacked his teeth together twice and continued to fuss with his tie. "He's insisting on checking everything from the box again, just in case..."

"He's insisting..." Lestrade looked at John who simply shrugged. "And you're OK with that?"

"Well I'd hardly say I'm alright with it. It's a complete waste of time, which quite frankly she could be better using to finish this ridiculous dissertation. It'll be impossible to get anything useful out of her until it's finished." He stopped and looked at them both. "What?"

"You do know that Patrick is totally in love with her, don't you?" Lestrade asked delicately.

"It would seem so, yes."

"And that's fine... that she's there, with him, rather than here, with you."

"Who's where with whom?" Donovan asked. She'd smothed her hair down considerably and was wearing a classic 'little black dress'.

"Nothing," Lestrade tried to say, but Sherlock ignored him.

"Lestrade is insinuating I should be jealous because Talis is working with an over-compensating flex-head who happens to be in love with her." Sherlock shrugged. "He's vile, and she can't stand him. She is however the soul of diplomacy... most of the time anyway. If he wants to check the stupid things another dozen times I'm sure she'll accommodate him, even if just on the off chance they find a gem among the trash."

"Wait... _you_ have a date?" She looked at him incredulously. "With a woman?"

Very calmly, Sherlock pulled a noise-maker out of his jacket pocket, pointed it at Donovan and pressed the button producing and ear-splitting honk. "What the hell?" She gasped, stumbling back.

"That was hurtful." Sherlock told her calmly.

"What the hell is that about?" Lestrade asked, hiding his smirk.

"Talis' idea. She thinks if he's more forthcoming about things that are hurtful or upsetting to him, people will start treating him differently, and he'll be able to interact better." John explained. "I looked up all the research and it seems quite sound... from a medical stand point."

"She's trying to _fix_ you? Have you been honest with this woman?" Donovan demanded, only to get blasted with the horn again.

"That was hurtful." Sherlock said with a slight grin. "This is actually quite fun." He said to John.

"Fun is a kind of emotion..."

"Well there you go, it's working already." Sherlock looked up as the lift door opened. "Ah, there you are." he tucked his noise-maker back into his pocket and went to meet Talis, offering her his arm to lead her from the lift. She wore a white silk slip with ruffle bodice covered in very light gauzy purple fabric that floated around her legs as she moved. Sherlock went to take a few steps but she stopped and looked up at him expectantly. He stared back, perplexed.

John coughed and gestured to her dress and Sherlock nodded. "Ah, right. Ahem, you look lovely. Purple has always been your colour."

Talis smiled and started moving again. "Thank you Sherly."

"Sherly?" Donovan got honked at again while Lestrade kissed Talis hand.

"You must be Donovan." Talis looked at the other woman who was seething and turning pink.

"Shall we go?" Sherlock asked. "Lestrade says we only have to stay a couple of hours, if we can find someone from Cambridge down there for you to pick a fight with that should fill most of the time."

"I'm telling you, he picked a fight with me!" Talis protested as he led her back to the elevator. "Can you imagine? 'Shakespeare was black', what a stupid, American idea!"

"Of course," Sherlock agreed calmly. "Everyone knows it was Francis Bacon."

As the doors closed Talis punched him quite hard in the stomach and he doubled over half coughing half laughing.

"That is the cutest and most disturbing couple I've ever seen." Lestrade confessed once the doors were safely closed.

"She's good for him," John said with a smile. "She wont take any of his nonsense."

"Do you really think that honking thing will work?"

"No, not really, but he's having fun with it and when he's in a good mood everything works better." John said. "I don't really think she expects it to work either, but it gives them a sense that they're doing something."

"What about..." Lestrade coughed delicately.

"... It's a work in progress." John scratched his temple and shook his head. "I caught him looking up kara sutra the other day." Both men laughed. "I told him he might be getting a bit ahead of himself, and for the moment he should just do what the rest of us do..."

"And what's that?" Lestrade asked, half fearing the answer.

"Whatever we're told!"

They both laughed.


	8. An Intimate Conversation 8

Talis dumped two large brown paper shopping bags on the kitchen table and started excavating the cold items to be put in the fridge. Domesticity still came more easily to her than the other stuff...

"What are you doing?" Sherlock asked from where he lay, flat on his back on the couch with an arm flung over his eyes.

"Use your eyes."

Sherlock didn't move at all. "I'm bored." He announced.

"That's nice. What is it you want me to do about it?" She was smiling as she turned back from the fridge and closed it behind her with her foot.

"Entertain me."

Talis couldn't help laughing. "Alright, I suppose the cold stuff is all put away. What is it you want to do today? Trip to the morgue? Pester the police? Oh, we could go get you some new body parts from the butcher!" She'd found early on that the best way to deal with Sherlock and his lifestyle was to just behave as though it were all completely normal. Weirdly, it didn't take long to start feeling that way.

Sherlock swung his legs down and looked at her seriously. "Why don't we have sex?" He asked calmly.

"... is that a question, or a suggestion?" Talis asked, walking around the table so she could lean against it and watch him closely.

Sherlocks eyes narrowed... normaly Talis was a very physically affectionate person. She'd come sit beside him, quite close, when they talked. She'd reach out spontaneously to touch his arm or face or hair, but in this instance she was keeping her distance... "I suppose that depends on the answer to the question, doesn't it?"

"Do... do you _**want**_ to have sex?" She crossed her arms, and he knew he was on somewhat unsteady ground.

"Well, we've been... whatever we are, for some time now. It seems like the normal progression of,"

"Sherlock. We're not normal. _**You**_ are not normal, and it's not important at all for us to pretend that we are." She interrupted.

"You didn't answer my question."

"Well you didn't answer mine either!" She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Alright... I'm sorry. I'm calm. The easy, defensive answer would be that you've never really expressed any interest at all in sex, with me or anyone else for all I've seen. And I'm not interested in making you do something you're not interested in... Really. I suppose it's that I promised myself that if I couldn't be alright with the way you are, then I had no business being here. Trying to change you will just frustrate us both. I wont allow myself to become a chore for you, and don't think I haven't figured out that you have a formula for when to kiss me!" She sighed and pushed herself away from the table to move over and sit beside him on the couch. "We're fine Sherly. I'm fine. I know you have to make an effort to remember to be affectionate with me, and I appreciate it. I do. But I can't have sex that way... I can't look at you and know you're just... just doing it because you think you're supposed to."

When she finally stopped talking, he was frowning at her, his eyebrows furrowed and his fingers laced together on his lap. "You're under the impression that I kiss you because I think I have to?"

Talis raised an eyebrow and then, quite deliberately, she leaned forward so their noses were almost touching and looked him in the eyes. After precisely five seconds Sherlock started to lean forward to kiss her but stopped himself. "See," she whispered.

"... John may have given me some guidelines." He admitted. "But that doesn't mean I don't want to."

"Sherlock, are you trying to say you actually find me physically attractive?"

"You seem surprised."

"Well... I mean the only opinion on sex I've ever heard you express was that it was mildly revolting..." She stammered. "When we lived together before you were pretty disgusted by all that stuff."

"You weren't kissing me then. Experience can... change ones opinions." They sat in silence for some time, with Talis watching him with wide brown eyes while he waited for her to say something. Eventually he became concerned that perhaps she hadn't understood what he'd been trying to say... or worse, perhaps she had and there was another reason she wasn't interested in a physical relationship. "Talis?"

"Sorry, sorry I just..." she coughed uncomfortably and looked away blinking.

"Are you crying?"

"Sorry," she repeated. "I just um, you caught me by surprise, that's all. I ah, I didn't think, I mean I thought you weren't..." she wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and coughed again to force her voice to settle. "I honestly don't know what to say now."

Sherlock gave a short laugh and shook his head, "will wonders never cease?" He reached out and took her hand. "I don't know what to do. I never knew what to do with you, the only thing I do know is that I want you in my life. You make me think clearer, you make me calm. The kissing is also pleasant."

"You could kiss me now, if you wanted..."

"If you know the formula why don't you just use it?" He asked.

"Because it isn't always about what I want, if you want to kiss me then you should kiss me."

"What if you're doing something else?"

"You could say 'excuse me' first if you like." She squeezed his hand. "Sometimes, what might be nice, is to have you show me spontaneously that... well that..."

"How is it possible that you have a doctorate in English and yet can become so completely inarticulate?" He asked.

"Just shut up, and kiss me, will you?"

"I've always been more comfortable with clear instructions," he murmured as he leaned in and kissed her.

Over the months that they'd been together, Sherlock had become significantly more adept at the business of kissing. He filed and catalogued her responses, her breath, her heartbeat, the softness or firmness of her lips... all the things which conveyed the mood she was in. It was much like an interrogation really, reading her cues, pushing her buttons.

When she gripped the smooth fabric of his shirt tightly in her fists and tugged his closer, he smiled slightly against her lips and wrapped his arms around her.

"This works for me." She breathed when he pulled back to let her breathe.

"Is now a good time for me to mention that I find you extremely physically attractive?" he asked.

"Extremely?"

"Indeed..."

"Oh... OH! Um... yes. Yes, it's a good time... uh, Sherlock? Have you... what I mean to say is, is this the first time you've ah..." She blushed deep pink and looked everywhere but at his face.

"Yes. Is that likely to be a problem?"

"No, not a problem, it's just information that's good to have..." She trailed off as he leaned forward and trailed his lips lightly down her neck. "Oh my..."

"I feel confident in presuming that you have," he said against her throat. He nipped the skin experimentally and when she gasped and gripped his shoulders tight enough to hurt a little he grinned.

"Well, yeah, but," she gasped when he nipped her again and ran her fingers through his hair.

"But...?"

SLAM! "Sherlock? Talis?" John's heavy footsteps came up the stairs and he appeared in the entryway holding two white plastic bags. "I stopped off for noodles I thought you might... oh my goodness." He stopped and coughed uncomfortably before doing a sharp turn into the kitchen. "I had no idea. So sorry. Goodness. Um, I'll just... yes. Ah, food is in the kitchen, and I'll just be... ah, out."

"Too late John," Talis called after taking a deep breath and huffing it out. "The valiant war hero has rather effectively killed the moment."

"Yes... ah... sorry about that. Noodles?" John asked lamely as he held up two white noodle boxes.

"Damn your noodles, Talis and I were going to have sex!" Sherlock blustered.

At the look of mingled horror and contrition on John's face, Talis began to laugh. Her face screwed up and tears streamed down her cheeks. After a moment of watching her, John began laughing too. Talis toppled over sideways so her head and shoulders were in Sherlock's lap and he held his arms up in the air looking surly and disconcerted.

"I really am sorry." John managed, leaning forward on the table for support as he struggled to get his breath back. "I can go out, I'm sure I can find something to occupy myself with for a while."

Talis was still giggling helplessly into Sherlock's knee's. Every time it seemed she was pulling herself together, she'd look up at Sherlock's perturbed expression and collapse again. "Don't bother... she'll be useless for hours now. Every time I say the word sex there'll be more of this" he indicated the sobbing, gasping woman in his lap. "Bring me a seafood box at least will you."

Talis squeaked and covered her head with her hands. John raised his eyebrow but Sherlock seemed to miss the joke entirely.


End file.
